Thanksgiving goes gourmet with high-end turkeys

More families are shunning the traditional frozen bird for free-range fowl or heirloom breeds that carry a higher price tag.

By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times

November 23, 2011

By long-standing tradition, the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner has been purchased rock-hard, frozen and cheap.

That’s starting to change. Turkeys are going Godiva.

The same passion for eating that brought us gourmet food trucks and swelled ratings for TV cooking shows has boosted demand for top-drawer turkeys with fancy names and even fancier price tags — up to $150 for a prized Bourbon Red heritage variety.

“People want a bird that has a name, a provenance, a pedigree — a bird you can brag about,” said Kathy Gori, a 60-year-old screenwriter who splits her time between Sonoma and Santa Monica.

Lindsay Calev of Redondo Beach usually steers away from pricier items at the store, but was willing to pay extra for a Diestel brand organic turkey at Whole Foods.

“I don’t eat organic every day of the year — wish I could afford to,” said Calev, 28, who helps create graphics for advertising. “But Thanksgiving is a time where we’re really valuing the food we’re making. I was willing to spend a few extra dollars for that.”

If you haven’t bought a premium bird by now, it’s probably too late. Many purveyors say they are sold out.

“My phone is ringing nonstop,” said Mary Pitman, whose family raises heritage turkeys, the priciest of the elite varieties,on a farm near Fresno. “Everyone’s on a mad hunt for heritage turkeys and there’s almost not enough left for my own family. It’s the most sought-out bird in the U.S.”

Despite the growing appetite for premium varieties, most of the 46 million turkeys that the National Turkey Federation says Americans will gobble down this Thanksgiving will be acquired foras little as 50 cents a pound at local supermarkets.

The trade group doesn’t break down sales of the fancy fowl, butretailers, farmers and customers all say that demand is soaring.

Heritage Foods USA, which sells turkeys online and ships viaFedEx, said it sold out of all 6,000 of its heritage birds, despite a $150 price tag for a 22-pounder. Sales of the bird are up 82% since last year, the company said.

Whole Foods, which operatesabout 300upscale markets nationwide, said sales of organic turkeys have tripled in the last three years and now account for about 40% of the chain’s turkey sales.

“Customers are much more into food now than they were a few years ago because of food magazines and TV shows,” said Theo Weening, global meat coordinator for Whole Foods. “People want to know where the bird comes from, what breed it is, how it’s been raised.”

Standard frozen turkeys, which are sometimes kept in cold storage for six months or more, generally cost less than $2 a pound. Some supermarkets have even given them away as part of a buying incentive for customers.

Beyond that, there are four major upscale varieties.

Free-range fowl, which have access to the outdoors, start at about $3 a pound. Next up the ladder are organic gobblers, which usually sell for at least $4 a pound and are certified by the USDA for their chemical-free feed and processing.

Heirloom turkeys are the next rung up, and are a type that date back more than a century to the earliest domesticated breeds.

Heritage turkeys cost the most, at about $6 to $12 a pound. They are comparable to the wild breeds used for the original Thanksgivings and are allowed to live months longer than most turkeys, helping them develop more flavor and dark meat as a result of heavy outdoor running and flying.

According to the Heritage Turkey Foundation, there are a limited pool of breeds — including Bourbon Red, Jersey Buff and Black Spanish — that are considered to be heritage birds.

2 responses

We paid $4.50 a pound for an heirloom turkey from a local farmer here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. My wife and I focus on organic foods and the free range turkey, not injected with growth hormones and not artficially inseminated fit right into our lifestyle.

We picked up our turkey about as fresh as you can get it… on the day it was killed, plucked and cleaned. Can’t wait to eat it.